


Earth, Wind, and Campfire

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bonding, Camp Counselor Castiel, Camp Counselor Charlie, Camp Counselor Dean, Camp Counselor Sam, Campfires, Castiel & Charlie Bradbury Friendship, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Cute, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, LGBTQA Camp, Love Simon References, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Protective Sam Winchester, Sam is the Only Straight Person in this Whole Fic, Sam’s POV, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, camp counselors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 11:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16016714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: Cas must be feeling the same breeze that passes just then, because he shivers. Dean shrugs out of his brown parka and wraps it around Cas’s shoulders.  Cas smiles—something not even natural light can bring justice to—before slipping into the coat. Dean relaxes back onto Cas’s shoulder, inhaling the heat from the fire, letting it expand in his throat and warm him from the outside in like a chimney on Christmas Eve.“We only have another month left,” he states. “When will we see each other after that?”





	Earth, Wind, and Campfire

**Author's Note:**

> Gen posted on her Instagram account with her and Jared sporting LGBTQA positive vibes. Jared was wearing a purple "Out Youth" shirt and it just screamed camp counselor and here we are now.

“Jack! What’re you doing?! It’s not rec time!”

“Sorry Mr. Sam! Kaia said I made her wet at the lake yesterday, and I felt bad, so I jumped in too!”

Sam shakes his head softly, as not to stir his looming headache even more. “Buddy, that’s not...!” He settles for massaging the bridge of his nose.

Next to him with a fallen branch aimed at Alex, Claire chimes in, “Jack does realize how gay he is, right?”

“Claire, what’s the rule when someone identifies as Questioning?”

“‘ _No suggesting during questioning_ ,’” answers the chorus of thirteen-year-olds.

“And?”

_“‘Don’t out what you know nothing about.’”_

“Beautiful, that’s just...”

Somewhere in the distance, Alex is screaming, followed by the audible crack of very thick bark. Somewhere _else_ in the distance, down in the same stream, are two familiar faces collecting wood for the campfire tonight. Except, there’s a lot more lighthearted pushing and shoving than necessary. After the fifth shove, a Jenga of branches spill over the gravel, causing a few of them to roll into the running water. Cas cries Dean’s name. Jokingly, of course, by the smirk on his face. Dean snickers and stalls like his precious ’67 Chevy during a heat wave in South Dakota when Cas bends over to retrieve some of the branches.

 “Mr. Sam,” Magda cuts in, “can I make a suggestion if it’s helpful?”

“Uh…” Sam forces his gaze from the two. “Yeah, sure, what’s up?”

“Mr. Dean and Mr. Cas should seriously hook up.”

 

 

“Okay, but you have to admit there’s a _slim_ possibility Link may be on the LGBT Spectrum.”

“I’m not debating the part about Link being a tad bit gay—I mean, have you seen the Peter Pan get-up?, I’m debating the quality of the representation.” Charlie chews her Twinkie angrily, like a mom who just got a call from her son’s school about another suspension and is completely regretting even giving birth to him at this point, let alone preparing his PB&J this morning, “Nintendo pulled the same queerbait Disney did with _Mulan_. You know, ‘she’s not really a man, so therefore he never had any homosexual feelings for Mulan even though she clearly posed as and carried herself like one’.”

Sam nearly knocks his lunch bag over the food bench for the gnats’ gain. “Exactly! They don’t want to admit it, but subtextually, it’s there. Sheik is Zelda and Link liked Sheik.”

“Obviously—how else could he have overlooked Zelda’s breasts in that armor?” Charlie fires back, waving her Nerds rope wildly. “And another thing…”

Something else catches Sam’s ear a table over. Claire raises her voice just loud enough for him to hear her cursing Krissy out: “There’s just no way! You can’t possibly like Kaia! _I_ like Kaia! You’re just a confused, clingy little brat who can’t even decide between her Lunchables!”

Sam shoots from the bench. He has a feeling this is going to get ugly. Not between Claire and Krissy—Claire has her moments for all of five minutes and Krissy has thick skin. Dean’s the one monitoring that table. Sam can already tell his mood’s shifted before he even goes to do the same. His shoulders cave in a little more than usual and his jaw locks. Cas, who’s sitting directly across from him, stands up and rests a reassuring hand over Dean’s arm.

Amazingly, though his jaw doesn’t unclamp, Dean’s chest deflates. Then, Cas swings his leg over the bench and heads to Claire a few kids over. He pulls her aside while Dean’s left to regain his senses.

Sam’s not sure how long he stares after that, so he turns back to Charlie with a scoff and another shake of his head, “Ha-um, right. Right?! There’s just no way…”

 

 

Sam’s seen the movie dozens of times. Mainly to grasp an understanding of where his brother was coming from when he came out to him and their family. The nice thing about _Love, Simon_ is the coming out scene has a happy outcome, rather than a downcast one. Not just for his brother’s sake, but for Sam’s.

Sure, a lot of families and friends unfortunately aren’t as accepting, and can be violent. But to portray _every_ support system as such disapproving or contemptuous—murderous, even—is just cruel. Sure, their dad was shocked, but he wasn’t angry with Dean. If anything, he was disappointed he didn’t come out _sooner,_ so he could’ve learned quicker about the permanent side effects of toxic masculinity. He stopped forcing Dean to do things because “that’s what real men do” (unless, of course, Dean likes to do it—fixing cars and blaring Zeppelin way too loud while he did so being an unfortunate constant). So to see their family portrayed on a major motion picture after the fact was super cool.

And seeing it dozens of times doesn’t change him tearing up every time Simon comes out to his parents.

Sam chances a glance at Dean, who’s luckily too engulfed in the movie to notice. It’s also way too dark to see anything but the screen casting a faint glow—just enough to see Dean rest a hand on Cas’s knee, who’s also crying.

Sam shifts his gaze. At least until after the movie’s over.

 

 

“Charlie, is Cas gay?”

Charlie drops her head. “Hello to you too, Sam. And I don’t know, is the earth flat?”

Sam’s eyes pinch. He looks around and shifts in his stance when he realizes he just barged into Charlie’s tent without so much as a warning. “Um… no. No,” he says more firmly, “of course not.”

“He’s not gay, he’s pansexual,” Charlie sighs, putting her book, _The Secret Life of the Lesbian Teenager,_ down _._ “Don’t you remember the quote?”

“‘ _Don’t assume what came from the womb_?’”

“No, no, the other one.”

“‘ _It’s wise not to surmi—_ Okay, alright, I get it.”

“Why do you ask?”

Sam just shifts again. He could easily take the bean bag opposite Charlie like he always does, but his feet betray him, rooting him to the grass like a stubborn weed.

“It’s Dean, isn’t it?”

“I just don’t want him to get hurt again.”

“Cas doesn’t either,” Charlie says, crossing her arms as she stands up, “the fact that he’s opening up to Dean says a lot. After Benjamin, he just—“ She stops mid-sentence: a rare action for Charlie Bradbury, and holds up a hand in its place. “I’ve said too much already. Look, Dean seems like a nice guy in the past couple months I’ve known him. And they make a cute couple. The kids seem to take to them.”

“They like Dean because he _is_ a kid,” Sam scoffs before biting his cheek. “Dean had a Benjamin. Except his name was Aaron.” Now it’s Sam’s turn to grind his jaw. He shifts his focus to the blades of grass enclosing his boots. “He’s the reason he got sucked right back into the closet the minute he came out. So it’s good to see him talking to other men again. Even if it’s just platonic in nature.”

“Oh believe me,” Charlie scoffs, “the way your brother’s been eyeing my best friend, there won’t be anything platonic happening in nature tonight.”

 

Judging by the outlines of two familiar figures huddling around a dwindling campfire at nine o’clock at night, Charlie’s not too far from the truth.

Sam smiles before he too blends in with the night.

 

Dean’s not sure how long after the kids went back to their respective tents he and Cas have been sitting here. The only indictor of time, aside from the navy blue sky, is the height of the fire. What was once an orange, hissing mouth is now a reserved, four-fingered hand flicking thin, fiery whips from its fingertips.

It’s an observation he took in only after resting his head on Cas’s shoulder.

Cas must be feeling the same breeze that passes just then, because he shivers. Dean shrugs out of his brown parka and wraps it around Cas’s shoulders.  Cas smiles—something not even natural light can bring justice to—before slipping into the coat. Dean relaxes back onto Cas’s shoulder, inhaling the heat from the fire, letting it expand in his throat and warm him from the outside in like a chimney on Christmas Eve.

“We only have another month left,” he states. “When will we see each other after that?”

Cas is quiet for a minute. Dean doesn’t have to see him to know he’s biting the inside of his plush upper lip and getting further lost in the forest ahead of them, just east of the campground, with those unwavering blue eyes of his. He returns to the present long enough to say, “Let’s not worry about it. Let’s focus on now.”

The silence that follows isn’t so quiet. In fact, the soft crackle of the fire and the soft patter of the water behind them is a tune of sorts. The wind even seems to carry a note of its own, using their respective ears as reeds. Dean moves his body to the rhythm of Cas’s breathing, and soon, they fall in sync to their own silent harmony.

“I dated a guy named Aaron,” Dean speaks up. “And when I say dated, I mean silly high school stuff, but we were really public. We went from hooking up in the locker room after hours to being together _all_ hours, every day, in front of everyone. It was terrifying. I remember puking every morning in the school bathroom before I even saw him.” Dean shrugs, as if what he’s about to say won’t threaten to break him in even tinier pieces. “But I came out for him. I came out _because_ of him. I risked _everything_ with my family, only for him to break up with me three weeks later for _Torvald_.”

Cas rests his hand over Dean’s hand resting limply on his knee.

“Benjamin verbally abused me almost every day we were together,” Cas says, “and I put up with that for three years. Three years because I thought I deserved it. I mean, I’ve been shunned from my family, I’ve lost friends. I figured there had to have been something wrong with me, and they were just pointing out the facts. I was unlovable, unruly, unimportant. Disposable, even. It took me three more years of therapy and a failed anti-depressant to come to the realization that I wasn’t the problem.”

Dean finally, appropriately, intertwines their fingers, and settles for rubbing full moons into the crease of Cas’s hand. His fingers are still blistered from a run-in with poison ivy the day before, but Cas doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’s the one who helped rid his shirt when everyone else was too afraid of being infected.

“And you.”

Dean lifts his head. “What?”

“And you,” Cas repeats with a small smile. “I’m serious, every time I’ve been around you this summer, I don’t feel… heavy. I don’t feel like I’m carrying all this extra weight behind me.”

“Ditto.”

“I’m sorry, _ditto_?”

“It’s a… Swayze… reference,” Dean mumbles. “I kind of love Patrick Swayze. And Demi Moore. I could never figure out who made me hornier whenever I watched _Ghost.”_

Cas laughs, and it’s a symphony to his ears.

Dean, the humbled composer, asks, “Cas, would you mind if I... momentarily put a little weight on you?”

“What do you—?”

Dean erases the rest of that question with his lips. Their mouths barely touch, but for the brief moment they do, it’s like Mozart discovering a piano.

Cas’s smile is full-blown, going as far as breaking the skin around his eyes and nose. It’s amazing he can hate the way he looks when he smiles—or at least, that’s what Dean assumes when Cas smothers it against Dean’s lips.

“The only thing missing is a Ferris wheel,” Dean says, mostly as an afterthought.

“I can definitely make that happen.”

 

Dean doesn’t think much of the statement until the following summer when Cas convinces the youth group to go to a carnival and help him hang a three-hundred foot banner from the wheel.

Dean says yes.

 


End file.
